Storybench from Northeastern University's School of Journalism

Storybench 2020 Election Coverage Tracker

How are Iowa and New Hampshire outlets covering 2020?

Less obsession with Trump. Less scandal coverage. More focus on policy specifics. Deeper coverage of underdog candidates. Those are the main trends that we noticed after analyzing over 50 articles […]

April 8, 2019April 10, 2019 Alexander Frandsen and Aleszu Bajak Election Tracker

Illuminating the road to 2020 through media coverage, candidate tweets and Google searches

Women on the 2020 campaign trail are being treated more negatively by the media

Sexism through sentiment analysis: Looking at the media’s coverage of 2020 candidates

Horserace or issues? Tracking the media’s coverage of the 2020 election

Six ways media outlets are tracking presidential candidates for 2020

Tutorials

How to model with gradient boosting machine in R

The tutorial is part 2 of our #tidytuesday post from last week, which explored bike rental data from Washington, D.C. Check it out here. The following tutorial will use a […]

April 9, 2019April 10, 2019 Peter Spangler Data Journalism in R, How to

Exploring bike rental behavior using R

Pivoting data from columns to rows (and back!) in the tidyverse

How a dataset on lighting strikes taught me to not take data at face value

How to animate a map in Adobe After Effects

How to build a heatmap in Python

Scraping HTML tables and downloading files with R

Behind the Scenes

Mixing storytelling and science: Behind the scenes at Hakai Magazine

Behind every great writer is a great editor. Shanna Baker, the senior editor at Hakai Magazine – which explores science, society and the environment from a coastal perspective – is […]

April 19, 2019April 19, 2019 Sarah Keneipp Behind the scenes

How the Wall Street Journal reported on “The Price of Climate”

How WGBH spent a year revealing how many women work in Massachusetts politics

Why Sharon Machlis wrote a book on R for journalists

How Vox’s Alvin Chang explains complex topics, from science to politics

How WCAI’s Heather Goldstone makes science more approachable

How The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported stories of ‘growing up through the cracks’

Insights

News digests to the rescue?

March 15, 2019March 15, 2019 Alison J. Head, Barbara Fister and Margy MacMillan Insights

Newsroom automation, election forecasting and U.X. at the New York Times: Keynotes at C+J 2019.

Six fascinating projects from the 2019 Computation + Journalism Symposium in Miami

Deepfakes are an occupational hazard for journalists. Beware.

Roundups

Six tools showcased at NICAR 2019 that you should probably learn

March 26, 2019March 26, 2019 Gibby Free Roundups

NICAR: With the right tools, anyone can be a data journalist

Six fascinating projects from the 2019 Computation + Journalism Symposium in Miami

Five Venezuelans that are explaining the situation unfolding in my country

Longform

The future of machine learning in journalism

Kevin Wall, a visual journalist at The Boston Globe, is just beginning to use machine learning in his reporting. But the large amounts of data he needs to leverage this […]

January 2, 2019April 10, 2019 Floris Wu Longform

Journalists improve coverage of memes with careful reporting

How the Palm Beach Post unearthed an opioid conspiracy with roots in Florida

Social media and news: The dilemma of our time

How The Washington Post designs its Snapchat stories

Making the interactive documentary “Oil to Die For”

The rise of documentary video games that use journalism to tell stories

What is Storybench?

Storybench takes an “under the hood” look at the latest in digital storytelling, from data visualization and investigative journalism to virtual reality and the digital humanities. In addition to in-depth interviews with industry practitioners, we offer hands-on tutorials that can be “downloaded” right into the classroom or newsroom.

Want to contribute to Storybench? Pitch us or join us for a graduate degree in the Media Innovation program at Northeastern University’s School of Journalism.

Subscribe to our newsletter

Over the next two years we’ll be surveying the media’s coverage of the candidates and the issues. Follow along here.

Join us at Northeastern!

Want to write for Storybench and probe the frontiers of media innovation? Apply for one of our graduate programs at Northeastern University’s School of Journalism.

Rolling admissions, no GREs required and financial aid available. Email here.

Interviews

Pizza, Press & Politics is our weekly speaker series at Northeastern’s School of Journalism. Watch interviews with David Filipov, Mike Workman, Jenn Smith, Martha Durkee-Neuman, Susan Labandibar, John Ward, Marc Fortier, Carol Gregory, Ling-Mei Wong and Elana Gordon.

Research

The Reinventing Local TV News Project, from Northeastern’s School of Journalism, is analyzing the formats and practices of local news stations, and suggesting new ways of telling stories that can better engage diverse audiences. Read our inaugural post here.

Collaborative, Open, Mobile

Over the last three years, Storybench has interviewed 72 data journalists, web developers, interactive graphics editors, and project managers from around the world to provide an “under the hood” look at the ingredients and best practices that go into today’s most compelling digital storytelling projects.

They boil down to three key areas of emphasis: 1) highly networked, team-based collaboration; 2) an ethos of open-source sharing, both within and between newsrooms; 3) and mobile-driven story presentation. Read our paper here.